Joe held his ground with only a few yards to spare. But that allowed the second Russian snowmobile to close in behind him. Together they tried to run Joe toward his doom.
A bump from the back pushed him forward. A bump from the side sent him to the right. He had maybe thirty feet to play with. Then it was twenty.
The first sled hit him again, knocking him closer to the edge of the world. The second one slammed him from behind.
Joe felt a sudden lack of control and a dearth of power as he tried to accelerate. A vibration through the machine told him the track had been damaged. Most likely the tread was unraveling. He cut his speed to conserve what was left. But that was just blood in the water for these sharks. The lead sled hit him once more.
This time the two machines locked together. The Russian sled leaning into his. Joe shoving back against it. Joe pushed the runners as hard as they would go, but he was losing the battle. Glancing to his right, he saw the edge and the void and a smattering of lights miles off and far below.
The tread suddenly unraveled. It flew off the back end, soaring directly into the chest of the rider trailing behind. Joe lost all control of the machine. In desperation, he leapt from his snowmobile onto the Russian one beside him.
The move surprised the Russian driver so much that he leaned and twisted, lifting one hand off the controls and swinging it backward in hopes of swatting Joe away.
Joe grabbed his arm, pushed it upward, and twisted, wrenching the driver out of position and forcing him off the machine. He fellsideways, hitting the snow and tumbling like an acrobat. At the same time, Joe lunged for the handlebars and took control of the speeding machine.
With a new horse under him, Joe watched the NUMA snowmobile nosedive off the cliff. It was followed by the trailing Russian snowmobile, whose driver had reacted late after being struck by the flying tread and had plummeted over the edge. Joe turned away, gunning the throttle on the machine and leaving the last of the pursuers behind him.
Kurt found himself in a far different predicament than Joe. Instead of moving too fast, he wasn’t moving at all. Having been catapulted off the snowmobile and into a drift, he’d burrowed downward, covering his face as a wave of flame washed over his back.
Snowmelt poured over him as the heat turned the water to liquid once more. Kurt crawled forward, escaping the flames by staying in the drift and emerging on the far side.
Looking back, he saw a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame rising into the sky. The body of the C-17 was a shattered hulk; the fuselage and wings engulfed in the unmistakable cloud of orange and black that only a fuel-fed fire produced.
The heat from the fire had cleared the snow from the plane. What was left sat as he suspected, with only the top half visible. The Russians were scattered about. Some of them scrambling to get back to their vehicles, others just running from the plane.
A sudden shift of the ground told Kurt why: the explosions had cracked the ice. The fire was weakening it further. With the weight of the aircraft pressing downward, it wouldn’t be long before it broke through.
With the snow around his feet turning to slush, Kurt looked for the snowmobile. It had run on after he was unhorsed, speeding and turning back toward the plane. It lay on its side near the tail, a few hundred feet from him.
It had been pushing full speed when the explosion launched Kurt off of it. Without any weight on the seat, the automatic kill switch had shut it down, but momentum and speed had carried it to where it now rested. Kurt just hoped it was still operational.
He trudged toward it, pushing through the soft snow and shielding his face from the waves of heat. As he neared the tail, one of the Russian commandos lumbered after him.
The man had been near the plane when it blew. His coat had been ripped open. His arm and shoulder were on fire; his face was singed. His rifle was nowhere to be seen. Staggering forward in the orange light, he looked like a member of the walking dead, but when he saw Kurt, he drew a knife and charged.
Kurt took a half step back as he blocked the stabbing motion. With a twist of the man’s arm Kurt separated the elbow. The knife went free, the man grunted, and Kurt leaned hard, throwing the man over his shoulder and down into the slush.
Kurt landed on the man and put a knee on his chest. He raised his fist for a knockout blow, but instead of hammering the Russian in the face, Kurt shoved his arm and shoulder down into the slushy mix. The flames went out, the burning clothes flaked off, revealing red, charred skin.
The Russian stared upward, squirming. Obviously in some kind of shock. Kurt lifted him to his feet.
“Get out of here,” he shouted. “Idti!” he added, using the Russian word for “go” or “run.”
The Russian stared blankly. In addition to the shock, he might have been deaf from the explosion. Kurt pointed him away from theaircraft and shoved him forward. He stumbled onward toward safety, never even looking back as Kurt turned for the snowmobile.
Kurt’s method of escape was no more than sixty feet away, but the journey to get there was a surprisingly difficult one. The snow was now twenty inches of deep mush. Not firm enough to walk on, not watery enough to wade through with ease. The slush gripped Kurt’s legs with a tremendous amount of suction. Each step requiring a herculean effort.
He trudged forward as waves of heat baked his face and kerosene fumes stung his eyes and irritated his lungs. Halfway there the ice shuddered and tilted as a heavy section of the C-17 broke through, settling a few feet deeper. The tremor knocked Kurt down on one knee. He got up and pushed forward, slogging his way toward the tail end of the aircraft.
A secondary explosion went off as he reached the snowmobile. A new fissure emerged in the ice, snaking its way almost directly beneath the snowmobile. Water shot up from it and spread out, mixing with the slush.
As the gap widened, Kurt righted the snowmobile, jumped aboard, and pressed the start switch. The lights came on instantly.
Moving was another story. The tread churned in the slush, blasting a slurry of material out behind him. It was a slow, fitful process, with Kurt backing off the throttle and then pumping it again like a man trying not to spin his tires in a Chicago blizzard.
Just as he slithered out of the muck, one of the Russian snowcats appeared.
“Not today,” Kurt said. He turned hard and went back the other way. The heavy tracked machine followed until it hit a fissure and went down at the front end.
